


Lusus Naturae

by undecimber



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Trauma, Empath Will Graham, Fairy Tale Elements, Familiar Winston, Garret Jacob Hobbs (Brief Appearance), M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Mortician Beverly, POV Multiple, Peter Bernardone (Brief Appearance), Stag Man Hannibal, Supernatural Elements, family themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 16:16:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20799455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undecimber/pseuds/undecimber
Summary: There was a new physician in town. He materialized seemingly out of nowhere along the mists of spring, setting up practice.Will did not like him.{Will is a recluse who lives near the woods; Hannibal's the beast that newly lurks them.}





	1. Eerie Paleness

It had been an uncommonly hard winter. Will had to keep the chickens inside, clearing room for a makeshift pen. For weeks the cottage had smelled of hay and bird droppings, but he didn't much mind. The brood was well-behaved, though liable to excitability through Winston's playful prodding.  
  
On the coldest days, the fire couldn't seem to burn hot enough. The hearth had to be constantly fed from a tall pile of firewood, supplied through ventures to the nearby woods, where he’d chop down logs that he hauled onto his cart, driving all the way back to his yard to cut up to smaller pieces.   
  
He didn't mind the exercise either, laborious as it was. It kept him warm, active. Idleness sustained the sense of unease that slunk like a shadow, always at the periphery of his sight since the morning of that first heavy snowfall, when he stood at his doorstep to find his surroundings smothered in pristine snow, glinting an eerie paleness.   
  
It had made a beautiful picture, he supposed. It filled him with dread nonetheless. Bad associations.

He was amply provisioned for the season with cuts of cured meat, salted fish and wheels of hard cheese; there were sacks of grain, jars of preserves, fresh eggs. The backyard vegetable patch –shielded from the elements with mesh and coarse cloth– doled a decent yield of hardy winter greens.  
  
He sold firewood on occasion and carried out various odd jobs in town, so he was never in want of work through the day –though evenings contained many more hours than he liked where there seemed to be nothing to distract himself with. Hours to sit in the armchair and stare at the blaze of the hearth.

The constant shuffling and cooing of the brood allayed some of the stillness. Winston’s presence too –the dog’s audible breathing as he dozed on the rug by Will’s feet, the faint whistle of his canine exhale. Even so, it seemed too heavy at times, as though the walls of his home were a living organism, and silence oozed thickly through its pores.  
  
His sleep was troubled, and often, he suspected, he babbled through the nightmares. Anytime he jerked awake, cold sweat beading his brow, it was a moment before Winston moved across the room, abandoning his pallet to station by Will’s side.

After several ragged breaths, when Will had begun to reorient himself, he would say, “Come here,” and only then would Winston finally climb into bed, like he’d awaited permission. It was mindless action then to fling an arm over him, scratch behind his ears. Winston was so warm, a solid comforting weight, close to which repose was slightly less evasive.

But that was weeks ago.

As unexpectedly as the snow had come, it began to thaw. For an interim the sludge was a nuisance that froze into icy sheets overnight, then melted again come morning, resulting in a great deal of mud. Winston had a field day frolicking in it, then scratched at the door to be let in, entirely coated in filth.

“You think I’m going to allow you inside looking like that? No way.”

In the yard, Will drew bucket after bucket from the water pump and doused it over Winston with reprimands that clearly lacked any real bite. The dog submitted to the washing with a pleased loll of his tongue and shook his damp fur with vigor, awarding Will a hearty sprinkling.

Eventually, the ground cleared, giving out a dappling of snow drops and pansies. New grass was freshly verdant in the clement spring sun; trees shuddered back to life, drawn out of their deep winter slumber.

* * *

  
Will’s horse needed to be re-shoed.

The journey to the stable took up some twenty minutes at a leisurely trot, accompanied by Winston who zipped ahead then waited for them to catch up, tail thumping the ground. This repeated several times, the entire way.

Peter Bernardone bred and looked after horses, but he had an affinity to all creatures. Aside from orderly equine stalls, the stable housed an extraordinary number of cages in varying sizes for all manner of injured animals; besides, there was ever some critter slinking or hopping about, trailing his ankles for a petting or a treat. 

Will found him at the end of a row of stalls, giving a glossy black mare a thorough brushing. His bony shoulder was a perch for a little blackbird, which kept nipping at his earlobe with a bright yellow beak.

At the sight of him, Will’s gelding let out a delighted neigh; it was from Peter that Will had purchased it several years prior, reared by him since its coltish days.

“I’ll be with you in a minute, Mr. Graham,” Peter threw over his shoulder, bright eyes creased with a smile that his collar obstructed. Will sat on an upturned barrel while he finished with the mare.

Peter brought out the implements to see to his gelding. He struck the horseshoes off, briskly; each hoof was trimmed, then cleaned and refitted with a new shoe. He worked steadily, betraying little exertion although it was no easy undertaking. The gelding was amenable but given to fidgeting, needing to be calmed and coaxed. The veins in his thin arms stood out like ropes beneath rolled-back sleeves, betraying his slight frame’s wiry strength.

When the task was done, Winston rose from where he’d waited by Will’s feet and presented himself to be doted on. “Hello, old boy,” Peter cooed, crouching to his level. He produced a treat from one of the many pockets of his great coat and stroked Winston all over with a fond mustachioed smile. 

Will made his payment then exchanged cordial goodbyes, but just as he made to leave, Peter asked, in a tone of startling earnestness, “Are you doing okay, Mr. Graham?”

Caught off-guard, Will hesitated. “Do I not seem okay?”

Peter didn’t answer straight away, observing him intently. Direct eye-contact was rare from him, which generally suited Will just fine. Now he had the faint impression of being eyed like one of Peter’s injured animals.

“Well, the beard is new,” Peter concluded.

Will’s hand rubbed at his bristly cheek a little consciously. He hadn’t meant to neglect his grooming but with the cold spell and his rather tenuous state of mind, he went a couple of weeks without. “I suppose I can shave now the winter’s done.”

“It rather suits you, though,” Peter admitted, passing a parting hand over the gelding’s neck. The blackbird on his shoulder emitted a spirited peep.

* * *

Will shaved the next morning before the speckled square mirror that hung in the bedroom; or what was meant to be the bedroom, rather, as he kept the bed as well as the dresser in the main living space-cum-kitchen. As such, this room retained the remnants of his older life, mostly: the nicer clothes he no longer had cause to wear, the trunks full of books, and other remembrances which he seldom looked at.

The big wooden tub was also kept here (circular in shape, forcing him to crook his knees to fit his legs inside or have them dangle over the brim). His last proper soak was at least two months ago. Too much of a hassle to pump bucket-fulls in the biting chill and lug them inside, when the rapidity with which the bath cooled wasn't worth the trouble it took to heat it. He made do with limited ablutions, scrubbing with a washrag and splashing himself clean, stood in the small tin tub.

Will regarded his murky reflection with more attention than he commonly afforded. He conceded there was perhaps a somber aspect to it. The beard was fairly short, not quite unruly, but it aged him, and his eye bags appeared prominent. More than anything, it was the look in his eyes that seemed off. Rather hunted.

His shaving kit lay open on a table before the mirror, alongside a bowl of hot water and a washcloth. He unfolded the straight razor and sharpened it against the leather strop. Then he lathered the shaving soap and applied it to his wetted beard.

He began shaving with a methodical hand, starting from the right cheek, scraping downwards, his left hand tugging his skin this way and that to insure smoother swipes of the razor. Every newly-exposed patch of skin tingled coolly. He took his time, especially along the tricky area above his upper lip, so that by the end he sustained only the smallest of nicks, drawing but a mist of blood, dabbed away in an instant. 

His hair had begun to curl past his ears, but he forewent a trim for the time being.

That afternoon found him sat on the rug near the fireplace on folded legs, inspecting his fishing nets for holes, when a familiar knock sounded on the door. Hardly a second passed before it swung open, revealing a beaming Beverly who breezed in and wrinkled her nose immediately.

“It smells funny in here.”

Will explained about the chickens (now reinstated in their coops outside) –which roused due hilarity. “What, you just let them shit all over?”

“I had them in a pen,” he said with a flat stare.

“At least air the place out. Jeez!"

Beverly stomped to every window, flung each open. She then proceeded to tinker around the wood burning stove, putting on a kettle for coffee. She knew where everything was, moving with familiar ease. She fixed two cups, then came to Will and nudged him with a foot to have him accept his. “Thanks,” he said.

She settled at the table by the opened window, temple resting on the prop of her curled hand; she took unhurried sips and watched Will’s work in companionable silence, that she broke eventually. 

“You look…” she trailed off.

“What?”

“I don’t know. A bit rough around the edges.”

“Heh, you should have seen the beard.”

“You grew a _beard_?”

“Shaved just this morning.”

“I bet that was a sight.”

Will pulled a length of twine to mend a rupture in the net. He asked after her work half-absently, his focus on threading the netting shuttle to tie up knots.

“I’ve been busy alright,” she said flippantly, “Old people dropping dead at every turn all winter.” And then, tone changing with a curious shift, she remarked, “I got to work with a frozen body –that was a first. A kid got lost in that dreadful storm last month. They found him two days later, half-buried in the snow. Poor thing.”

Will’s hand clenched around the netting tool. He said nothing.

Either sensing his perturbance, or completely oblivious to it, Beverly’s tone changed again, turning jovial. “Where’s Winston?”

Will became conscious of his tight grip and loosened his hand. He resumed his mending. “He’s hardly in the house these days. Always running out somewhere. He hated being confined by the weather.”

“That’s a shame. I actually came to see him, not you.”

“I’ll be sure to convey your regards.”

Will used to worry relentlessly, back when he’d recently taken Winston in and discovered his penchant for wandering. He had since learned to accept that Winston was quite an independent dog, all things considered. Every now and then he had mysterious canine affairs to see to. There was never any discernable pattern to his disappearances, which varied from hours to several days, even; but he always found his way back home, which was the important thing.

Beverly stayed about half an hour, offering bits of town gossip. When she rose to leave, Will walked her down the length of the dirt road and waved her an equable goodbye.

* * *

Their acquaintance had begun several years back, when Beverly accosted him rather frantically in town one day, startling him enough to nearly drop his bag of loaves.

“You’re Graham. You can do some carpentry, can’t you?”

“Um.”

“You ever made a coffin?”

There was a crisis it turned out, regarding a funeral for which no coffin could be procured. The deceased was none other than _the_ coffin-maker who Beverly contracted with, (“Talk about irony, huh?”), an unusually tall man, broad of the shoulder, who could not be wrestled into anything readily-made in his workshop. The harried wife had insisted the funeral be set in a day –leaving no time to commission one from the next town. To top it off the carpenter was taken ill and his apprentice was on leave, visiting family or some such inconvenience.

Will had made boxes before. He said as much. “Well, it can’t be that different,” said Beverly.

She took him to the mortuary to take the dead body’s measurements. Then he was left in the coffin maker’s workshop to make quick employ of the materials and tools there. Cobbled together in a matter of hours, the coffin was hardly elegant, but it was functional. He lined it with dark velvet which he nailed to the insides rather crudely.

“It’s –not bad,” said Beverly, and paid for his service. As additional thanks, she cajoled him into accepting a drink, heedless of his protestations.

“Wilkin’s tavern, at eight. I’ll be waiting!”

Will considered staying home, letting her make what she will of his absence; but, after some consideration, he thought it better to weather a single evening’s discomfort than cause undue offence. Beverly was rather forceful, but not overbearingly so.

He was familiar with the tavern, having been on a few occasions of rather pathetic loneliness, surrendering to an overwhelming desire to see human faces, to hear the cadence of some conversation –even one which didn’t include him. He had rued each time precisely the moment he set foot inside and sensed about a dozen eyes on him at once, regarding him with interest befitting a rarely sighted creature.

The interior was dark, wooden panels on the walls, lit by a giant fireplace and diffused candlelight. It was busy as always, the air inside muggy and boisterous. Beverly was already ensconced in a corner at a low rickety table. She beamed and beckoned him over.

“I didn’t know if you were going to show.”

“Me neither,” Will answered frankly, taking the opposite seat. The table was narrow, so he had to mind his feet lest they knocked against hers. Beverly was in a simple navy-blue dress, her shiny black hair let down her shoulders. “What do I order for you?”

She waded across a sea of tables to get to the bar, then returned with two tankards of beer.

Will asked how the funeral went and she obliged; they had to hunch forward to hear each other over the din. 

Just as Will began to experience the inevitable plunging in his stomach, dreading the fumbling small talk to come, she confessed, “Truth be told, I’m curious about you. You’re an enigma, Graham.”

“Oh?”

“No one knows a thing about you.”

“There’s nothing to know.”

“That can’t be true.”

Will shrugged. “I just work and keep to myself.” He took a gulp of beer and opted for deflection. “I know nothing about _you_.”

“Well, then ask me. That’s how people get to know each other.”

He considered his limited pool of questions and went for the easiest. “Why did you become a mortician?”

“Because I’m fascinated with death,” she answered simply. “And –well, something happened, when I was younger. I—” she stopped. A serious look flitted across her face, and it seemed apparent she was weighing the prudence of further disclosure. 

Will made his tone encouraging, mild. “What happened?”

“You’re going to think I’m weird.”

He ventured a smile. “I already do.”

It had the intended effect of relaxing her, lifting up the corner of her mouth; she traced her fingertip round and round the rim of her drink and said: “My… mother died when I was young. We didn’t know what it was. She just passed in her sleep. On the day of the funeral, in the middle of the viewing, something happened.”

“I was staring at her body, laid out so unnaturally still and unlike herself.” Beverly frowned into her drink. “I didn’t know what it was, a vision or –something. I seemed to be the only one to see it. Her chest starting moving. I could hear this rhythmic murmur, as if her heart was beating really hard. It kept beating and beating, visibly, and then her chest burst open. And a bird darted out.”

Will leaned closer, utterly intent. “A bird?”

“Yes. A blackbird. It flew around the room, then fled out an open window. When I came to say my last goodbyes, I peered at my mother and found nothing remiss. Her dress was in place. There was no blood, no wound, nothing. Like I had imagined it.”

Somewhere to the left a group of men laughed uproariously, booming across the room. Beverly’s eyes flicked in their direction.

“You don’t think you’d imagined it, though,” observed Will.

Her eyes returned to him. She shook her head.

“What makes you certain?”

“I saw the bird again. After the funeral, when we came back home. It was in the garden, next to the rose bushes that my mother tended. It was dead. There were flakes of dried blood on its feathers. So, I buried it there.”

Beverly took a deep draught, then exhaled a heavy sigh. “Ever since I’ve found myself drawn to the dead. Wanting to put my ear to their chest, to listen for that blackbird trapped inside.”

The surrounding noise seemed to abate for a moment, the gravity of Beverly’s admission creating an insulating bubble of silence around them. Will pondered what to say. Then Beverly shrugged, and the bubble snapped. “I also just think bodies are neat. It’s interesting work.”

“I… had an interest in bodies too,” Will offered. “Not dead ones strictly, but –anatomy, you know, how they worked. I used to study. I had a look at a few cadavers in my time.”

Beverly’s eyebrows rose in pleasant surprise. “You’ve considerably risen in my esteem, Graham.”

Quite suddenly, Will realized that he liked her; that he was having a good time, as opposed to the tedious chore he’d contended to suffer through. Emboldened by this realization, he asked, “Do you mind if I stopped by sometime to watch you work?”

Beverly grinned.

* * *

Beverly lived at the outskirt of town near the funeral plots, where she conducted her business. Her house and the mortuary were connected, twin buildings bridged by a walled passage near the back. They were white walled, with red shingles and window shutters of deep blue. The house front was trellised, entwined with neatly pruned rose bushes that were just beginning to bud. 

Regardless of the winsome facade, the mortuary was dim inside, the entry of sunlight controlled with heavy drapes where the bodies were kept. There was a spiced scent of burning incense in the air, which didn't completely mask that strange cloying odor of death.

The rooms were ordered, with dark walls, partitioned stations and an abundance of shelves with labelled jars and vials, stacked in accessible rows. Various tools were scattered about wheeled tables, ranging from innocuous looking brushes, to more alarming implements such as pliers and large, curved needles.

The first time Will came over with the intent to observe, Beverly was preparing a boy who had drowned. The boy was tragically young, hardly pubescent. The wall of the well outside his home had crumbled and he had tumbled in; nobody had heard any cries.

The corpse was pallid, but undamaged, found before becoming water-logged. Will stared down at him, at the painful blue of branching veins underneath the delicate skin of his eyelids. That very shade seemed to suffuse the remnant impression that clung to him—not acrid fear, which was jagged-edged, and, if thought of in hue, was perhaps a searing scarlet or a dirty yellow—but a strange sense of resignation. The boy had stopped struggling against the water towards the end, had simply allowed it to swallow him whole, surrendering to its cool darkness.

Will must have seemed too fixed, worryingly glazed, because Beverly nudged him. “Are you alright?” He nodded tightly.

Beverly placed weights underneath the eyelids, sewed the mouth shut. Will’s discomfiting awareness of the body melted away as he became engrossed in her practiced efficiency. There was satisfaction in watching the manner of her hands. She handled the boy in an involved fashion that was matter-of-fact, but markedly solemn, belying her often irreverent jokes about dead bodies.

* * *

Will further ingratiated himself by gifting Beverly a thick tome from his college years. It had a dark leather cover, embossed in gold lettering, containing detailed anatomical diagrams. Her eyes positively sparkled.

She had a scientific mind that was drawn to precise pursuits. Every year, she harvested her roses at the peak of their bloom and extracted their essence in her basement distillery, bottling it in dainty glass vials. She made large quantities of jams and pickles, her kitchen transformed into a miniature factory, various fruits and vegetables piled high on counters, large pots boiling away while she made reference to her notes for exact amounts of salt or sugar. They struck up an agreeable barter, her preserves for his fish and eggs.

Beverly’s easy cheer and disregard for reservation ploughed through Will’s social ineptitude, ill-accustomed as he’d become to human proximity. He had forgotten what company was like. A strange, albeit welcome change.

The first time she entered his cottage and spotted Winston, she went down to her knees in a poof of skirts, showering embraces and smooches that had Winston licking at her face with glee, his tail thwapping away like mad while she laughed and laughed and Will felt a brittle expansion of affection in his chest, fragile as blown glass.

Months into their friendship, he discovered that she played the violin for a hobby. He chanced upon the case in her living room and naturally requested a song or two. “I should warn you, I’m out of practice,” she said, taking out the instrument, tucking it under her chin.

Unsurprisingly, she erupted into bawdy tunes to which she sang in a terribly off-key voice, making Will snort his drink all over his shirt. She attempted to make him sing along but he shook his head and claimed not to know the words.

“Oh, you _must_ know this one,” she exclaimed, sawing away at the violin with impish delight. “Come on! Have you lived under a rock?”

* * *

There was a new physician in town. He materialized seemingly out of nowhere along the mists of spring, setting up practice. Every tongue longed to wag about him, or so it seemed. Will couldn’t escape hearing of him.

A most distinguished gentleman, the townspeople said, of great wealth, having moved into the grand house that went unsold for years following the death of its owner. He dressed beautifully –not fashionably, but to his own esoteric taste, cutting a dashing figure. His foreign accent titillated curiosity, as did his eccentricities.

His practice, for instance, operated most singularly only three days of the week. For another, he frequented the marketplace in person, fastidiously selecting his own food rather than relegating such a task to a servant, as one would expect.

Oh, but how charming he was. How cultured and affable.

Will met him in the market, as it happened, one early morning. The sun had hardly risen, splashing incarnadine brilliance along the underbelly of strolling clouds. Will was unloading a few baskets of trout at the fishmonger’s stall, when the man came forward and engaged the fishmonger with some inquiry.

The fishmonger indicated the day’s variety, and much to Will’s chagrin, pointed him out, vouching for the freshness of his catch. Will endured an introduction, looking at the crisp white cravat knotted at Lecter’s throat.

“Not fond of eye contact, are you?”

His eyes shot up, bristling in defiance.

Lecter had a jarring face, which on first impression straddled handsomeness and hideousness paradoxically – a narrow nose, broad cheekbones and a rather wicked looking mouth, stretched in a self-satisfied smile that hardly touched his sunken eyes. The smile set Will’s teeth on edge.

He made himself stare and said nothing, the silence extending long enough that the fishmonger became embarrassed by him. “He isn’t very sociable,” he apologized, the proverbial guardian of a recalcitrant charge.

Will was used to condescension, yet it never tasted less bitter; nevertheless, there was something else about Lecter that spurred his dislike, though he could not immediately make it out.

Later, in the shelter of his cottage, changing out of his fish-smelling clothes and thinking on the fine shiny material of Lecter’s waistcoat (red like an ooze of blood), it dawned upon him.

Will couldn’t always read people. Flares of intense emotion leapt at him, most commonly distress; but more often than not, his ability was temperamental. There was, however, a certain individual stamp that people gave off, a baseline sort of hum that he could sense about them. 

It was second-nature to him, to the point of being unconscious, but if he concentrated, he could bring it to mind, just as one could recall a particular texture or flavor. Peter’s presence had the warmth of a fleece blanket, radiating general goodwill to the world in droves. Beverly’s was piquant, exuding the verve of dancing waves.

From Lecter, where that hum should have been, there was silence. Nothing. Curious blankness, as if he were dead. But even the dead yielded a closing suspiration, the body’s final vestige of, well –life.

_Nothing._

Unnerving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started out as a nebulous aesthetically-driven oneshot idea which floated around the back of my head for ages, then snowballed into full-blown plot out of nowhere. Hah. 
> 
> It's my first multi-chaptered work of considerable size, which is equal parts exciting and nerve-wracking. Can't wait to share the rest! 


	2. Bloom of Poppies

Will rose from bed, lit a lantern and unlatched his front door, stepping into the blackness of a moonless night. He did not stop to change out of the nightshirt he wore to sleep, nor to shod his feet. He walked and perceived things around him, but he wasn’t awake; he wasn’t dreaming either, not entirely: a blend of the two, vision and reality layered—each atop the other, merging and filling his brain with coruscated images.

Alerted by the unusual movement, Winston perked up and trotted after him, keeping watch.

Will strayed further and further from the house, taking the path that went straight through the flat grassy fields onto the edge of the woods, illuminating the way in a limited radius. Had he been conscious, he might have considered the recklessness of drawing such attention to himself.

The forest was superficially quiet, teeming with the minute scuttling of nocturnal creatures and insects going in the dark. Leaves fluttered in whispers as the trees grew denser. From a distance, a pair of owl wings flapped together, taking flight.

Will’s feet became thoroughly begrimed, sustaining nicks and pricks as he trod through the underbrush. He was insensate to them. Within the circle of light around him, the outline of surfaces gave off mesmeric glares of color, as if the night had passed through a prism that split its constituents into a vivid spectrum, counterpoint to the darkness.

So absorbed was he that he had no awareness of the passage of time, and it seemed he traipsed about with no purpose other than to roam.

Quite abruptly, he became aware of a nearby sound—distinctly set apart from the usual background. It was a desperate sound; rather low, but chilling, a wretched, animal groan. He continued in its direction, but Winston tensed beside him—taking hold of the edge of Will’s nightshirt between two jaws and yanking.

He resisted, dragging forward until his shirt came free with a rip. He drew closer to the source of noise, which by that point had progressed to a peculiar snuffle, a moist, rending sort of sound. He straightened his arm, extending it forward.

A few feet away, under the shadowy arch of two scraggly elms, a figure was hunched on the ground. It was difficult to make out its precise appearance. Something beastly, spindly, limbs bent at sharp angles. A pair of antlers stretched on either side of the bulbous head, like spikes spearing up into the sky. A horrible mouth masticated flesh audibly, dripping blood which fizzed against Will’s vision in lurid, glowing stains.

It had claws at the end of articulated digits. Not paws, but hands—like a person’s.

But it wasn’t a person.

Will took another step closer, and the lantern cast a ray that slashed across the beast’s all too humanoid face, lighting up two eyes that darted up coolly—a pair of clever, lustrous obsidians. At its feet, the body upon which it feasted was not that of a hare or a deer, or any woodland creature, but a mangled human corpse.

Winston gave another yank to Will’s nightshirt, whining low in his throat. This time, Will allowed himself to be pulled away. He lowered the lantern and turned back in staggering steps which turned into a brisk walk, then, after a sufficient distance, a proper sprint.

He ran all the way back home.

In the morning, he woke up sprawled on bed with stinging feet, smearing dirt over the sheets. His toenails were clogged with it. Beside him, the lantern was tossed on the floor in a careless splatter of oil. The front door was flung wide open.

The realization that he had wandered into the night with no awareness of having done so twisted in the pit of his stomach. He strained his mind frantically, riffling through his most recent memories before going to sleep, desperate for a link between then and now—finding none.

And yet.

Yet he thought there was something right on the cusp of recollection, a fragment of a dream or a vision that took hazy shape behind his eyelids when he closed them; a vague impression of something…antlered.

* * *

His sense of unsettlement persisted through the week. Will couldn’t tell what was wrong with him, only that something wasn’t right. There were headaches. Brief spells where he came to and realized that the past few or several moments were blank. And it seemed he was always warm, regardless of the mildness of the air, cooled by intermittent showers.

He went on with his routines regardless.

In his back shed one midmorning, as he prepared to apply a fresh protective coat to the rowboat upended on the floor, Will found that he was almost out of varnish. He had to shut his eyes against the unreasonable flash of irritation, expel a hissing sigh. The next moment he strode off to saddle his horse, determined to have the task complete come noontide.

The clang of hooves was a percussion of agony against his skull—while the sun glared into his eyes in searing pinpoints. He gritted his teeth against the exertion, the ache deep in his muscles. He thought he might have heard Winston’s lope catching up behind him, but he didn’t look back to check, didn’t slow his pace.

Approaching downtown, the accustomed miasma of a crowd’s collective energy began to oppress his senses, particularly heightened. He felt as heavy as a stone, and as dull as one. Trickles of sweat made their way down his back, ant-like.

All at once, an overwhelming whirl of vertigo spun his head about—and Will was slipping off his horse, dropping to the cobblestone with a hard thump. Through the dizziness, he was marginally aware of someone rushing to his side, leaning over him, touching him, perhaps. Speaking to him.

The words were mere noise; they signified nothing. The face above him shimmered, like the surface of boiling water. His ears were filled with a distant sort of roar—and then all awareness left him.

* * *

Although not strong enough to be called prescience, it was definitely _something_; a certain cognizance of a happening, calling to Hannibal’s attention as he exited the butcher shop with choice cuts of beef wrapped in a paper parcel, tucked into his basket.

A disturbance came from down the street—the clatter of horseshoes, panicked neighs and the soothing sort of tones one used to calm a startled mount. Curious, he let the feeling draw him to the loose ring of people who’d halted their market-going activities to make a spectacle of whatever took place. A man had managed to take hold of the horse’s reins, and now gently stroked its neck; off the side of the road, the main attraction was a kneeling young woman attempting to revive someone unconscious.

Recognition struck Hannibal the second before he looked at the prone form properly, by scent alone; and then he saw the slack face, overlaid briefly with the flicker of lantern light (and further back in time, a furious stare that arrested him in bitter—_delightful_—challenge).

Will, he recalled the name, was drenched in sweat. Two spots of color splotched his stubble-rough cheeks. The woman was sprinkling water on his skin from a cup into which she re-dipped her fingers, to no apparent success. Noticing Hannibal’s advance, she went bug-eyed and blurted, “You’re a doctor!”

A murmur went around.

“I am glad to be of assistance,” Hannibal said.

He set his basket on the ground then sat on his haunches to have a look, but hardly extended a touch before a tawny-furred mutt emerged from between people’s legs and scampered to Will’s side, baring its teeth at Hannibal. He ignored it completely, while the woman made shushing sounds.

Having fallen off his horse in a swoon, the first thing Hannibal checked Will for were injuries from impact, gingerly feeling at the back of his head for any tenderness or cuts. Fortunately, he found none. Then there was the question of what ailed him. Clearly, Will was febrile, though the nature of the fever was unknown yet.

Hannibal determined the optimal course of action was for Will to be conveyed to his home, where he might best attend to him. This he said to the watchers at large, who seemed to approve, nodding and hmm-ing in tandem. He indicated his carriage, stopped at a close distance on the opposite end of the street, where his coachman waited. Two onlookers hoisted Will and stuffed him inside. The man who’d calmed the horse offered to lead it to Hannibal’s home, for which he expressed his thanks.

Through these proceedings, the dog guarded its master jealously, even leaping after him into the carriage, which Hannibal tolerated with a pursed mouth.

At his house, Hannibal declined the coachman’s offer to carry Will inside. He did so himself, up three flights stairs to the guest room where he stripped him out of his coat and the sweat-soaked shirt stuck to his chest in wet translucency. He took off Will’s supple leather boots and placed them upright at the foot of the bed. He lay Will down properly, propping his head up with pillows.

At last, he took a thorough examination. He looked inside his mouth, pushing the tongue down, peering down the throat. He unpeeled an eyelid, inspecting the whites of the eyes. He flicked his pocket watch open with one hand, took Will’s fluttering pulse with the other, then snapped the watch shut.

All the while the dog sat alert at a corner, following each of his movements closely. Hannibal opened the window for fresh air and left the room briefly; when he returned with a bottle of medicine and a basin for cool water, the dog had crept close to the bed, its forefeet resting on the edge of the mattress. At his entry, it retreated to its sentinel post, regarding him with suspicion.

“I intend him no harm,” he said, “Only treatment.”

The dog sniffed.

Distrust from animals was commonplace to Hannibal—they often sensed something about him that put them ill at ease; but this went further. There was no veritable confirmation, but he knew instinctively: the dog recognized him from the woods.

Tilting Will’s head back, Hannibal administered a spoonful of medicine and gently massaged his throat to facilitate its ingest. Will’s eyelids fluttered open, but his roving eyeballs registered no lucidity. Soon he settled back to unconsciousness.

Hannibal wiped him down with a damp towel, changed him into a loose sleepshirt, then applied a cool compress to his forehead and left him to proceed with his day, checking up on him in regular intervals.

* * *

At some point in the afternoon, the dog came downstairs and maneuvered the front door open with paws and teeth. Hannibal observed from a window as it stopped by a shrub, lifting up a leg to relieve itself.

He pushed the door shut after it, and locked it for good measure.

Discovering its expulsion in a minute, the dog thumped at the door relentlessly, barking up a racket. On and on it went, so that Hannibal indulged the thought of dispatching it to eliminate the nuisance. If later asked by Will, he would simply state that he hadn’t seen it. There were, however, multiple witnesses to the dog embarking his carriage to consider; besides, the animal was too clever to have just lost its way. So, he relented.

(There was, as well, a reluctant glimmer of appreciation that it showed enough curtesy not to soil his floors).

When Hannibal reopened the door, it snapped at his ankle threateningly and darted upstairs, as if expecting to find its owner slaughtered, or spirited away.

* * *

By nightfall, Will’s fever had worsened; but that was to be expected. It had to burn out of him. He tossed and twitched in a fit of bad dreaming, emitting garbled sounds that were unintelligible, apart from several distinct no’s—and on one occasion, a groan that might have been ‘father’. Beads of perspiration dotted his flushed skin, to which dark strands of hair clung in tendrils. Hannibal watched dispassionately, making final observations. He applied a fresh compress to Will’s forehead before leaving him for the night.

In a swift move curtailing Hannibal’s enhanced reflexes, Will had his wrist in a pincer grip. His eyelids flew open, and he stared at Hannibal, no—_through_ him, pupils so dilated the irises appeared black. His body stiffened, arching off the bed as by a possessing force.

Contempt shadowed his pallid face. His lips drew back in a rictus. “You may have them all fooled, but you can’t fool me,” he sneered.

“Is that so?” said Hannibal lightly.

“I see you,” Will said, the sibilant hissing unnaturally. 

“What do you see?”

“The antlered beast, underneath that stretch of skin you pass for your own.”

Hannibal stilled, electrified.

All at once, the strength seemed to leech out of Will; his body collapsed back to the mattress, eyes rolling back into his head. His grasp on Hannibal’s wrist loosened, yet his fingers remained enclosed around it.

Hannibal shrugged his wrist free, looking at Will anew. Really taking stock of him, as if for the first time. The line of Will’s throat was bared vulnerably, the bulb of his Adam’s apple a delectable protrusion. It was a beautiful throat. Lovely to bite into.

Hannibal inclined his head in a considering gesture.

* * *

Ashen and sluggish, Will came to at midday, pushing himself up to a sitting position. He took in his surroundings with confusion, which sharpened to apprehension, especially when he spotted Hannibal, stationed at a chair by his side. A valiant attempt to present a neutral face was undermined by hardness to the set of his jaw, the suspicion with which his eyes withdrew.

“Good morning, Will.”

“Morning.”

“How do you feel?”

“Fine…Where am I?”

“In one of the guest rooms at my house. You fainted in the market yesterday, if you remember.”

“I remember.”

“Well, I happened to be nearby and saw you brought here. It was a terrible fever. You were delirious last night.”

Will tensed visibly. “What did I say?” he spluttered—then twisted his mouth in self-castigation.

Hannibal paused for a studied moment. “Nothing…coherent.”

He rather savored the way Will squirmed, wondering what it was he feared to have revealed; but he cut his enjoyment short, rising from the chair. “I’d like to examine you now, if you please.”

“I feel fine.”

“Don’t be obstinate, Mr. Graham.” 

Will’s eyes spat fire, but he did not protest again, so Hannibal stepped close. He brushed a few errant locks off his forehead and flattened his palm to it. The fever had gone down considerably, but he was still quite warm to touch. Taking his pulse, he found his heartbeat erratic, but that might just be the effect of his presence.

“Look up.”

The redness in his eyes had subsided.

“Open your mouth, please.”

Begrudgingly, Will did.

“Wider.”

All signs pointed towards recovery.

“Well, it seems you have overcome the worst of it.”

Will’s fingers pinched at the seam of the covers, pulling at a thread. “I must repay you.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

“Why would—" Will cut himself off. “There must be something you want.”

“To see your health restored.”

Will frowned; his shoulders had yet to unclench. Hannibal resumed his seat, folding his hands on his lap, a gesture to inspire reassurance. “What can I do to put you at ease?”

Will considered his garb and muttered, “My clothes.”

“Yes, they are in the dresser, you will find. Top drawer.”

Beginning to shift out of the bed, he shot Hannibal an expectant look. Taking the cue, Hannibal stood up. “While you dress yourself, allow me to have a meal sent for you. You must be famished.”

“There’s no need,” said Will, wobbling to his feet. “I’ll be out of your hair in a minute.”

When Hannibal turned the door handle, the dog, who had been dozing in its corner all this while, stirred awake. Seeing Will, it perked up with a yelp, balancing on hind legs to lick at his face. Will’s laughter froze Hannibal at the threshold. The change in his demeanor, the soft lines near his eyes, the wide smiling mouth—were stunning.

In no time at all, Will was dressed and at the front door, having adamantly refused food, though he was persuaded to take a bottle of medicine with instructions for the dosage.

“Thank you for your kindness,” he said in parting, as if it pained him, and left swiftly, avoiding Hannibal's eyes.

* * *

Hannibal waited approximately a week before he made his visit. As the lone cottage came into view, he saw through the fence that Will was cutting wood in the yard. Alerted to his presence, Will cast a look over his shoulder, then straightened up, abandoning his work. His gripped the hatchet in his hand, loosely.

“Good day,” said Hannibal.

“G’day. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Hannibal dismounted his horse and approached the fence. “Ascertaining the progress of your recovery.”

“Do you go to such lengths with all your patients? I can’t imagine that’s a sustainable practice.”

“Are you always hostile to visitors,” Hannibal smiled, blandly, “Or do you harbor particular antipathy towards me?”

That seemed to sober Will, curbing his gruffness slightly. “I’m fully recovered, as you can see. Thank you for your concern.”

“I brought you something,” Hannibal said, holding up a tin box, tied up in cloth. “Stew.”

“Stew.”

“For lunch. It’s good for you. Very hearty.”

Will blinked.

“Will you let me in?”

Lodging the hatchet in a tree stump, Will came over and swung open the fence gate. He waited for Hannibal to lead his horse in and tie its reins to a post, then opened the door to his cottage. “Excuse the shabbiness. I don’t entertain often.”

“That’s quite alright.”

A few steps in, Hannibal handed him the tin, which Will regarded with near comical consternation. “You needn’t have troubled yourself.”

“It’s no trouble. Cooking is one of my principle pleasures.”

A sharp look. “You made this?”

“Yes.”

The corner of his mouth tugged up wryly. “You didn’t poison it, did you?”

“That would defeat my purpose, wouldn’t it?”

Will ushered him towards the dining table by the window. The chair creaked as Hannibal took a seat with a smooth gesture, crossing his leg, turning one foot up jauntily. The fabric of his breeches pulled taut over the line of his thigh. Will made himself look away. 

“Uh, your purpose?”

“Availing myself of present company.”

Will began setting the table with plates and cutlery retrieved from the kitchen shelves. “I don't picture you wanting for company. Not enough to seek mine, at any rate.”

“Do you truly regard yourself so poorly?”

Will held his eyes. “Do you always evade questions?”

Hannibal only made an amused sound. 

While Will moved between the table and the kitchen area, Hannibal let his eyes roam over the interior of the cottage. It was humble, certainly, but not shabby. Simply furnished, its arrangement unconventional but practical, prioritizing function to aesthetic. Though there was little by way of ornamentation, it had the warmth of a well-lived in place. The armchair, the worn rug, the shelves and the plain curtains all held a rustic sort of charm. 

A number of books propped on the mantlepiece piqued his interest; he made a note to look at them afterwards. 

Will placed a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water on the table and sat down for the meal. Discreetly, Hannibal watched him spoon into his mouth a cube of meat which he had seasoned delectably, braised to perfect tenderness. “Mm, tasty."

He smiled. "Thank you.”

Then they ate for a few minutes of silence, which Will seemed disinclined to break.

“I gather small talk is not your forte,” Hannibal remarked.

“...Whatever gave you that impression.”

“Believe me, I’d do away with the tedium of pleasantries too, if I could.”

“And yet the whole town’s ready to eat out of your palm.”

“Heh. Not you, though.”

Will paused, spoon mid-air. “Does that rankle? You don’t give the impression of someone panting for approval. I don’t see why you’d bother with me when I'm no one of consequence.”

“You suspect ulterior motives." Hannibal swallowed down a bite. "Is the concept of friendship so alien to you?”

Will narrowed his eyes. “Why me?”

“I can hardly say. One does not set out to select whose company one likes. It just happens.”

Will said nothing, mulling this over.

Following their repast, he cleared the table while Hannibal took the liberty to walk over to the fireplace. The books were academic, as he suspected, volumes on a range of sciences. He pulled one of them down. “I believe I have a copy of that in my library.”

“Oh.” Will inched closer. He stood with a rather awkward stiffness, his hands hanging at his sides. His guard was not lowered per se, but there was something less bristly about his manner. “Remnants of my studies. Though I confess it’s been ages since I gave them serious perusal.”

With his reticence slowly coaxed through conversation, Hannibal found him possessed of serviceable knowledge, concentrated on physiology. It was no surprise to him that Will had had an education, not only for the intelligence that shone through his outward roughness. He had noticed when handling Will’s clothes that although they were old, they were of a fine quality. The coat particularly had an expensive lining and excellent stitch-work. 

Shortly after, Hannibal took his leave. Will thanked him for the meal in less constipated tones than when he'd accepted the medicine, which, all in all, he counted as a success.

* * *

Sometime later, when Winston returned home, panting from an extended romp, he behaved unusually. He sniffed around the house in a displeased way and kept circling back to where Will sat in the armchair, nudging his knee with a damp nose, making concerned woofs.

“What is the matter with you?” Will said, scratching behind his ears, to which Winston had only solemn looks for answer.

* * *

No luck hunting today. Twice, he had come close. The first time he'd stepped on a twig that snapped aloud, alerting the hare he trailed—which twitched its ears and disappeared into the underbrush. The second time he had missed his shot narrowly. Blowing a frustrated breath, Will stretched his limbs, straining with the effort it took to maintain absolute stillness.

For a moment he simply stood there, looking around. It seemed suddenly that his surroundings impressed him with their crispness. Foliage all around him came into sharp relief, and the variety of texture on the barks of trees. He looked up to a patch of sky visible through a break in the canopy, a deep blue heralding sundown’s approach.

It was then that he felt an unmistakable prickling at the edge of his senses. His arms broke out in gooseflesh. Prudent action would be to turn away, get home securely; instead, Will followed its pull deeper into the woods, adopting again the careful gait that minimized his noise.

The prickling grew into an incessant clamoring, metallic in its tang, upsettingly recognizable. Distress.

A shrill cry pierced the air. Heart thudding, he hastened towards it. 

From the cover of trees emerged a pair, engaged in a scuffle. A girl, sobbing, struggling in the grip of a man who held her close, with a knife drawn to her throat. He spoke a choppy stream of words against the side of her head that Will couldn’t make out, but the tone was shockingly desperate.

Rolls of emotion inundated him, so thick they stoppered his lungs. Will clenched a hand at the firearm slung over his shoulder. Stepping from behind a tree to make himself known, he shouted at the man to let the knife drop, let the girl go.

The stranger was past awareness—or if he heard Will he made no indication of it. Nothing held his focus but his victim, gripped tightly to his chest. He never ceased the torrent of words to her ear. 

Time seemed to warp over the next few seconds, a distortion that made an indolent arc of the man’s arm as he moved it, parting flesh with the blade of his knife.

Will shot him. It jolted his shoulder back, loosening his hold. The girl crumpled to the ground, and Will fired—and fired—and fired, erupting a bloom of poppies across the man’s torso, until he collapsed.

Will spared him no look, but launched straight to the girl, who sucked in gasping breaths and twitched and gurgled, reminding Will disturbingly of a dying insect. Her eyes, wide with terror, were full of an unfocused intensity that was dreadful to behold.

His hands went to the gash in her neck, trying to stanch the blood that spurted freely against his fingers. He had to act fast. Letting go, he fished out his pocketknife and ripped the sleeve of his shirt, tearing a make-shift bandage which he fastened around the wound.

The girl’s consciousness was slipping. He hefted her up in his arms, then without ado headed home, going as fast as possible without jostling her too much. Her head lolled back against his shoulder. Her hair tickled at his neck.

When he reached his cottage, the sunlight was a reddish hue, richly splashed across its facade, glazing the windows. He kicked the fence open, hurried in, lay the girl upon his bed.

Will did not realize how badly his hands trembled until he got a scrap of parchment and a quill out, scrawling a quick message. His fingers smeared blood on the paper. “Winston,” he called, crouching, “Come here, boy. Take this to Doctor Lecter. You know where he lives, don’t you?”

The dog showed hesitance. 

"Go, Winston, as fast as you can!" 

Out he went bounding, note between his teeth. 

Will was alone with the girl again. So still was she that she could have been dead, but when he held his hand to her nose, he could feel the faint flutter of her shallow breath. She was blanched entirely of color, a sprinkling of freckles standing in sharp contrast to her pallor. The bandage was already soaked through, starting to seep to the bed.

Stopping only to light the fire, Will then tore more bandages, which he wrapped firmly to her throat. Kneeling by her side, he held his hand to the wound, applying even pressure. He did not know what more to do. Shadows lengthened. Outside, the sky deepened in shade. When the minutes of waiting stretched torturously, he began to pick leaves out of her hair with his free hand, smoothing it down.

The sound of hooves beyond the fence made his heart throb. He rose to his feet and rushed to the door.

Dr. Lecter was the image of professional composure as he disembarked his mount, leather case in his hand. Wordlessly, Will led him in and gestured to the bed.

Hannibal passed an assessing gaze over the girl, then set to work briskly. He snapped his case open and began laying its contents on the side table. “I need your assistance,” he said. “Fetch water and heat it, please.”

Will followed readily, frantic with need to be of use. He filled a pail from the water pump, lit the stove, set a pot to heat up. Meanwhile, Hannibal shrugged his coat off and put on dark over sleeves. He had Will pour the warmed water into a shallow basin, to which he dripped something from an uncapped vial. He unspooled the bandages Will had applied and inspected the cut. Dipping a soft cloth into the basin, he cleaned it with gentle swipes. 

Hannibal reached for a curved needle, threading it, snipping the length he desired. “I need you to hold her head up for me. Yes, just so.”

With steady hands, he drove the needle into the wound’s upper lip, then the lower, joining the two in a crisscross pattern, pulling stitch after stitch, which he tugged on the thread to tighten until the slash closed over. It might have taken ten minutes, or twenty—Will was entirely transfixed.

That done, Hannibal slathered a salve over the stitches, and finally, properly bandaged her throat. 

They looked at each other then, and exhaled.

* * *

After re-packing the case and clearing up, Hannibal and Will sat by the fire with a cup of rasping spirits each. In the de-escalated stress, Will was quickly drained of energy. He felt minute tremors going all through him, but particularly his hands. _However did Hannibal keep his so steady? _

At length, he asked the dreaded question. “Will she make it?”

Hannibal nodded, once. “I should think so. She has lost a great deal of blood, of course, but you did well to stanch her wound as you did; and with adequate attention, I see no risk of infection.”

Reassuring words, but Will couldn't relax. Too keyed up.

“Will you tell me what happened?”

Emptying his cup first, Will recounted the incident in a monotone. It was already something rather distant, unreal. He had the sense that he was starting to slip outside of his own body, blurring at the edges. Hannibal listened to the entire story without interruption, not even the types of sounds one made to indicate attentiveness; but there was no question of it, his eyes were rapt, nearly discomfiting in focus. Finally, he leaned back into the armchair and took a considering sip of his drink.

“What of the man?” he said.

Will’s head snapped up. He hadn’t thought of the man at all, all his attention on saving the girl. “I –he must be dead.”

“Are you sure? He might have gotten away, injured.”

“No,” Will insisted. The shots that he’d fired rang in his ears. “He’s dead.”

Perhaps he should display remorse of some sort. He just admitted to killing a man, but he was numb to any particular feeling on the matter. He certainly did not regret saving the girl. “I guess I ought to deal with the body…” he trailed off.

Firelight reflected brightly off Hannibal’s eyes. “I’ll come with you,” he said. “Show me.”

* * *

Before they left, Will changed out of his ruined shirt. He shrugged out of it thoughtlessly, passing a rag over his forearms. They were no longer caked with blood, but he did not feel clean, the scent of it heavy upon him. 

It was not until he began to put on a fresh shirt from the dresser that he noticed, with a jolt in his lower belly, Hannibal’s gaze affixed to him. 

Hannibal met his eyes evenly, as if nothing was untoward. Will looked away and made quick work of his buttons.

A curtain of darkness had fallen outside. As they stepped out into the cool evening, Winston was quick to follow, but Will asked him to stay behind and watch after the girl.

They rode together pillion—Hannibal’s idea, him holding the reins, Will sitting in the back, lighting the way. The lantern threw flickers of light and shadow, cleaving a path through the dimness. The motion of the horse was a lulling rhythm. Hannibal was warm against him, the press of his body the closest physical contact Will could recall in ages.

They did not speak, apart from Will’s murmured, “Here," and, "This way," while Hannibal steered the horse accordingly.

The place, when they reached it, bore no major trace of all that had transpired. In Will’s mind, it should have been gore-soaked, a visible scene of butchery, but the dark earth had mostly absorbed the blood, and only some scuff marks denoted the incident. 

The man lay motionless where Will had shot him, his eyes open and clouded, mouth ajar, face fixed in a mask of horrid oblivion. 

Peering at him from behind Will’s shoulder, Hannibal concealed a wolfish grin that possessed him fiercely for a moment. The man’s chest was riddled with shots, at least half a dozen. Oh, to have seen it happen—to have witnessed Will alight with righteous, deadly aim!

Examining the man yielded no identifying artifacts, just a purse with some coin. A glint a few steps away drew Will’s attention—the knife with which he’d hurt the girl. He pocketed it.

“Do you think anyone will come searching for him?” he asked.

“Hard to say. At any rate, we should bury him.”

Not wishing to leave the girl unattended for long, they agreed to hide the body for the time being. A straggle of densely packed bushes provided suitable enough cover. Hannibal helped Will carry the already stiffening corpse, lifting the torso, while Will picked up the feet.

Back in the cottage, they found the girl unchanged: deep in slumber from which she seemed unlikely to awaken soon. Hannibal brushed a speck of dirt off her cheek. “I better take her home with me.”

“Yes, I had hoped you would...” said Will. He rubbed at the back of his neck, eyes downcast. “I can’t thank you enough for tonight.”

“Think nothing of it,” Hannibal assured with a squeeze to his shoulder. “I’m always keen to aid my friends.”

In order to transport her, Hannibal was to borrow the cart. Will loaded her there, tucking her into a nest of blankets. Not for the first time, her fragility struck him, awakening a protective twinge that made him loath to part with her so soon. He prolonged their moment of farewell, fussing with the folds about her, securing her warmth. 

He exchanged goodbyes with Hannibal, and the cart set off into the night. He watched for a long time, long after it had vanished out of sight down the curve of the road, stood by the fence in the stillness. Breathing.

The rest of the night was a blur of restless motion. He fed his dog, saw to his chickens and the horse. As for his own dinner, he hardly had an appetite. A few mouthfuls of stale bread were swallowed with effort, gulped down with water. He was aware of an itch to drink—drink to the point of excess, but he resisted. No good could ever come of that.

His bed retained an impression of the girl’s presence, the sheet rumpled to the shape of her small body, stained with blood. He ripped it off, held it clumped in his hands and after a moment’s hesitation, fed it to the fireplace. It blackened and caught fire instantly, issuing smoke and a thick, singed fabric odor. He opened the windows.

The mattress too was stained, so he flipped it over to sleep in it tonight; a replacement could be bought the next day. 

He hardly slept, though. Disturbed images flashed before his eyes. For hours, his immediate concern for the girl occupied the forefront of his mind, but now, he kept seeing the man’s sightless eyes. Replaying the last moments of his life. Shooting him again and again and again.

What he refused to examine in the heat of the moment and its frenzied aftermath, he now recalled alone. The sharp edge of thrill, cutting through viscosity of emotions which didn’t belong to him yet threatened to smother him all the same. It had felt good to make it stop. To snuff the life out of the man. 

Powerful.

* * *

At daybreak, Will took a shovel and went into the woods to dig a grave. He picked a spot where the trees were a little thinner, to avoid encountering roots. Despite not having rested, the physical strain grounded him, made him feel solid again. He began to sweat and took off his shirt, hanging it on a branch.

Then it was time to bring the body, which he dragged out of the concealing bushes. He refused to look too closely at it, treating it as an object, nothing more. Laying it down detachedly, piling dirt on top.

He flattened the grave and covered it with dead leaves to make it blend with the forest floor. To mark it, he nicked a cross with his pocketknife onto the bark of a neighboring poplar.

There was a residue of emotion that clung to the place, hovering close to the grave. Like the perfume of someone who had left the room, a waft that's slow to dissipate. A roil of terror and scrabbling desperation, but underneath it all, underlying everything, the most lingering aftertaste was this: love. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Given this story's 80% drafted already, I thought I'd manage to balance regular updates with uni work, no problem. I......truly played myself.
> 
> Hope it's worth the wait though ;-)


	3. Guardian Angels

Abigail was hatching an escape plan. She had been saving up for months, putting coins away into a nook underneath her bed, safe from prying eyes. Enough to board a room for a few nights, if it came to that. She was taking a little food with her, and a waterskin; a change of clothes, packed tightly in a bundle. And she could hunt, forage. Survival skills taught—with due irony—by her father.

Her mother she was sorry to abandon, but there was no other way. The chance to confide was long past, lest she admit her complicity.

Her father’s love was an ill-fitting dress. It restricted her arms, dug into her ribs; with every breath she took, she further outgrew it, but to shed it was to go naked, and Abigail could not abide her nakedness. Could not denounce his love without exposing her own sullied skin.

In the nook she also kept a satchel, procured in secret from the apothecary on an afternoon of running errands. A powder of poppies and valerian root: a sleeping drought. 

The principal concern was ensuring it being fine enough to dissolve into the wine her father liked to have after supper. In a small mortar and pestle, Abigail worked the powder for ages, moving the stone in a slow, circular grind. Over and over until her wrist ached, the thought turning in her mind.

Freedom.

She made a habit of pouring his wine, making herself sweet to him. Handing him the carved wooden cup, then sitting at the rug, by his feet, staring at the fire while he spoke about his day. Sometimes, he ran an idle hand through her hair.

Her mother often retired early, but now and then she too would join them in the living room, where she read, or busied herself with needlework in the lamplight. Her hands were given to tedious, precise stitching. They were coarse from so much housework, but trim and clever—expressive in compensation for the sparseness of her speech.

On such evenings, when they were a family ensconced in seeming tranquility, it would occur to Abigail that she sat amid them, meek as a lamb, while plotting to rupture that very peace.

It was a wonder, what derangements people obscured behind such tepid façades. Who would ever look at her father, with his watery eyes, his benign balding head and think—murderer? Who would think of young women, slaughtered like cattle, dragged into the darkness of a hunting lodge, no trace left behind, not even bones? Who would look at her and think—blood, blood, blood?

* * *

Abigail’s mother had suffered several miscarriages in the past. Once, a baby had come to full term, a girl whom they named Ruth. She was a tiny sickly thing, her skin a mottled red, her cries so shrill and piteous. They thought that they would lose her in those first few days, but against all odds, she endured.

Weeks turned to months. Though she was always ailing, the couple finally had reason to hope again—but shortly after her second birthday, a fever came. She passed in her cot, quietly in the night.

It was when they had finally resigned to a childless life that Abigail happened. The discomfort that accompanied her mother’s pregnancy was at an unprecedented minimum. The birth came with relative ease. Abigail was not wrested from the jaws of doom, a presence eked out on borrowed time—but came forth as a gift of life itself. Healthy, hearty. Beautiful.

“We just couldn’t believe it,” her father would say when telling this story, brushing the hair back from her face, drawing her close. “Our own little miracle.”

Her mother would say nothing, eyes lowered with some unspoken anguish. Hands twisting on her lap.

And so, Abigail passed from infancy to childhood, and each time she fell ill, her parents braced themselves for heartbreak, which didn’t come. Overjoyed, yet never at full ease, they lived in constant anticipation of the blow. They watched over her every step, guarding her from any potential danger. Often was her childish curiosity quashed. Until the age of ten, she could stray no farther than the front yard unaccompanied; even then, her excursions were limited. All for her own good. 

Mother’s words were few and always to the point. When she was displeased, she narrowed her lips and two lines etched themselves onto her forehead. It was father who lost his temper when Abigail displeased him with some perceived incaution on her end, whose voice boomed frighteningly, who slammed things—though he never struck her. Never.

“How many times must I tell you, Abigail?" (in between ragged breaths that flared his nostrils) "Don’t do things that frighten us. Don’t you get how we worry? Don’t you see how you grieve us?”

Always speaking in the plural, a spokesperson to both their pain; mother so silent and somber.

They took Abigail to her sister’s grave once. It was a small plot shaded by a chestnut, where grandparents she had never met were also laid to rest.

Looking at the small tombstone, Abigail was overcome with pity—less for the inhumed unfortunate and more for her own malcontented self. If only Ruth had lived, her parents would not be this smothering; or if they were, she might have had someone to share this imprisonment with. But Abigail was alone.

It was a curse, to be an only child.

* * *

On the night, she was as dutiful as ever. Her mother was in bed already. Her father was in his customary chair.

She slipped the powder into the cup, stirring the wine in, discreet as she could be. She schooled her features into a careful blankness as she brought it to him, betraying nothing.

Her father’s eyes appeared too bright; glossed like they were when the throes of death closed upon those poor girls, her surrogates. Or was that a trick of her mind? He accepted the cup with a small smile.

Sightlessly, she picked something off her mother’s bookcase then seated herself at the foot of his chair. It seemed forever before he took that first, slow sip. Abigail relaxed her shoulders, fighting down the tension that made her muscles rigid. She could not give herself away. Her father was a hunter, she thought: he knew what a frightened animal looked like.

She flipped through pages, not really reading, but passing her eyes over the lines, slowing down her breath. Her father drained the cup. He placed it down. _Was there a residue at the bottom? Was the taste at all suspect?_

She made a show of yawning, closing the book. “I’m off to bed,” she said, kissing his forehead. 

He blinked lazily. “Good night.”

In her room, Abigail put out the light and curled underneath the covers. It was a while before her father’s step shuffled to her door. _Heavier than usual?_ He paused.

When she was younger, it would be open, always; she would rouse from sleep sometimes and feel his heavy presence there, watching. That it was now closed was a concession to her age, although it had no lock, still. Through the wooden barrier, she sensed him lingering, a specter that overshadowed her entire being. _Will he come in? _She held her breath.

He shuffled on to the end of the corridor.

Exhaling, Abigail waited and waited, counting the minutes until an hour had passed and he was certain to be sound asleep. She was tempted to creep into her parents’ bedroom, taking one last look to ascertain his drugged stupor. Perhaps that would calm her; but she feared the opposite effect. Instead of reassurance to steel her resolve, the sight of his prone form next to her mother would soften it.

She took her bundle from underneath the bed and bound it to her waist; opened the window and climbed down the side of the house, alighting on the soft grass. She stopped only to fill her waterskin from the well; then she was on her way.

It was a lovely night, lit up by a full moon. She’d taken this into consideration so as to travel without a lantern. The path she had plotted would take her through the fields and farmlands that led onto the next town, a three-hour walk.

Billowy clouds progressed across the sky like chariots. The stars shone brightly; the springtime air smelt sweet and plush. She did not savor it. Her walk was brisk, her jaw set. She felt like a coiled wire, wound in tension.

At length she began to see the faint red lights of the town. As she drew closer, the silhouette of buildings became clearer. Onwards, into the town’s dormant heart, her shoes clicking on the cobbled streets. She avoided shadowed alleys, drew a cloak over her hair and walked with swift purpose.

She had a knife in her pocket, held in a tight grip. At some point she passed a group of drunkards, huddled under the awning of a seedy establishment. They jeered, but she did not grace them with a look. One of them lurched after her, incensed by her failure to acknowledge them, but he tripped over his own feet with a thud. Abigail hurried away. Her grip on the knife was so hard, the ridges were indented into her palm.

The inn was manned by an older woman with a frizz of steely hair piled high on her head. Abigail came forward with a story ready in case any questions were raised—something about a sick husband several towns over, having no one to accompany her. It was entirely unnecessary; the lady accepted the money with decided indifference.

A page boy led Abigail to her room by candlelight, up a narrow wooden staircase. The room was squat, with whitewashed walls that were scuffed in grey. There was a single bed with a lumpy looking mattress, a low table with an oil lamp (which the boy lit from his candle), and a chair of white wood.

Abigail draped the cloak over the chair, removed her shoes, then lay down stiffly. The bundle she did not unfasten from her waist, out of some suspicious instinct.

Sleep refused to come. For an age, she stared at the wooden beams above her. Her heart refused to settle. Every time her thoughts strayed to her father, she felt her pulse points fluttering in aching spasms.

Shortly after daybreak, she left the inn. The marketplace was waking up, the bakeries firing up their ovens. She bought a loaf of bread, then stole quickly out of town. She broke a piece off the loaf to nibble on, though her stomach was a hard, uncooperative knot.

It was noon when she finally entered the large woods where she could relax, shaded from view. In there she could get lost, make herself invisible, the way her father taught her. The dress she had on was particularly chosen because its fabric made her blend more easily into the tree line.

Her feet were sore from her excursion, with a blister forming on the edge of her heel. She found a cool stream to dip them into. She splashed some water on her face, feeling lighter.

She made great headway in crossing the woods, keeping parallel to the stream. For food she ate some hard cheese from her bundle with more bits of the loaf. She also found some wild berries, a little underripe, but edible. Their cool crunch was refreshing.

When it began to get dark, she searched for suitable cover to spend the night: a more densely wooded area with a dip in the ground. She broke off some branches, propped them against a large tree trunk and draped her cloak over them, making a small cove to nestle inside. It was not very comfortable, but it made her feel secure.

Once more, she slept poorly, but the sense of safety that came with cover set her more at ease.

More walking the next day, deeper into the woods. She felt immensely lucky when she managed to shoot a pigeon down with her sling. She plucked its feathers, then took her knife and loped its head off on a flat stone by the stream. She cut it open, tearing out its innards, which she covered with dirt and leaves. Then she cleaned her hands.

It was close to sunset, but she figured there was enough time to cook the bird without worrying about a fire drawing attention to herself. She lit one with a flint she carried, using leaves and dried twigs from trees she knew made good kindling. She built a quick spit and set it over the fire.

She was turning the pigeon over, sprinkling salt, noting its doneness. Suddenly, she remembered that she had left her knife by the stream. Careless! The very next moment, she lifted her eyes from the fire, and froze. Standing a few feet away, half-hid by the trunk of an ash, was her father, staring at her.

It was evident from his pose that he had been there a while.

* * *

_Brightness, color, a whirl of leaves, the terror of fleeing, her father’s voice—cursing soothing begging her forgiveness all at once, the jackrabbit pounding of her heart, the tremor of her father’s frame, a new face, a man’s, the eyes mirroring her terror, a loud bang—everything blooming into a flower of confusion, blurring together, too much too little, her awareness stretched thin over on unbearable moment lasting an eternity._

_Darkness, movement, pain, ragged screams of girls, a wall of antlers, flickers of firelight, twin voices murmuring, the variance of daylight, those same voices again, speaking, reading to her, what were they saying? What were they saying? She couldn’t make it out over the screams. _

_If only Abigail pushed harder she might break through to the surface of things, escape the dreadful loop of memory, but something held her back, a seedling of fear, and she was back again in the woods, running running running, the sky spinning above her, the bird she'd caught slipping out of her fingers, fluttering away, and she's splashing in the stream, and a little body floats by, a body trailing blood in the water, trailing white chrysanthemums and lilies, and she calls after it, Ruth, Ruth, Ruth—_

* * *

The guest room was quite nice, when viewed past the alarm of his initial stay. The wallpaper was a welcoming cream, patterned with flowering branches, the window shaded by curtains of lace. Outside, a laburnum tree was in full bloom, its yellow clusters kissing the glass.

The girl was tucked in bed, deep in slumber. She looked fresher than when he parted with her that evening by his gate. She was changed into a loose shift of linen. There was a little more color on her face. Her hair was clean and braided.

Will wondered whether Hannibal had braided it himself, or if one of the servants had done it. He allowed himself to picture it for a moment: Hannibal propping the girl's body up with care, passing a brush over her hair, gently. 

(A vague half-memory surfaced to the forefront of his mind, a time-smeared impression of his own mother braiding her wavy tresses. He pushed it back down.)

In the span of a week, the room had become familiar to Will. Hours spent on the chair by the bed. When Hannibal was home from his practice, he would update him on her condition. They conversed in low tones. Sometimes, Hannibal read from a book on his lap in lilting tones that enveloped like a spell. 

When it was just Will and the girl—when nothing broke the calm of the moment, and no other presence colluded with hers, it would come: a seizing of his heart, an echo of that desperate love he felt the morning he buried her would-be murderer. 

He tried to shake it off, to be objective in his concern. For his view of her to be uncolored by someone else’s. He knew nothing about her. Not one thing. Yet, he ached, in a way he could not explain nor begin to understand.

Friendship with Hannibal was an unexpected progression. Not a month ago he had scoffed at his offer of company. What was it that had earned such bitterness at the onset? Such suspicion? The man he saw before him now was dependable. Open. Perhaps even kind.

The stoic stillness of his emotional core, which at first disturbed Will, had become a strange comfort. All of Will’s apprehensions seemed to find a place to dissipate, absorbed by his opaque placidity.

There was a burgeoning feeling in the room when Will considered all the potential between them. What they could mean to one another.

“She is our mutual charge. Yours and mine,” Hannibal said as they watched over the girl, a pair of solemn guardian angels. “Led to our care by fate and circumstance."

"As I was led to yours?" Will quipped. 

Meeting his eyes, Hannibal smiled, a slow, pleased smile.

Will realized the implication of what he had just said and looked away, flustered. 

Fate.

Warm light filled the room. A zephyr made the lace curtains swish to and fro, throwing pretty shadows on the floor.

* * *

Lately, Will was of two minds. One oriented to the present, channeled at whatever task he had at hand, the other floating miles away where it had lingered at Hannibal’s threshold. 

Working over his cutting board, scaling a fish that he'd caught earlier, Will drove the curved edge of the knife into his left hand and did not realize until the blood dripped onto the fish. He stopped, lifting up his palm. Only when he saw the wound did he feel the sharpness of pain. It bled freely, oozing down his wrist, trailing down his forearm. He stared at it for a few moments before he washed it away, cutting a strip of cloth to curb the flow.

Hannibal brought attention to it on his next visit.

"It's nothing,” said Will, resisting the urge to hide it behind his back, “Just a slip up.”

"Let me have a look at it."

"You don't have to do that."

Hannibal’s gaze was direct—disarming."Consider it more for my sake than yours."

Will relented.

Hannibal led him to the window seat in the library where copious light poured in through the wide panes, dappled by a tree outside. Will extended his hand, palm outwards. Hannibal undid the rough bandage.

The wound was considerable; not deep, but not shallow either, a gouge on the fleshy part of his palm. It was still a little damp, the skin around it crusted by dark, congealed blood. Hannibal’s brows came together. "What happened?"

"Scaling knife." 

Hannibal's kit was set on a small wooden table. He was seated on a stool opposite Will. Unstoppering a bottle, he applied antiseptic to the wound, which drew a hiss from Will’s teeth. Then he applied some type of ointment. It had a sharp but not unpleasant medicinal smell. He spread it over the wound with his thumb.

After that, he cut up some gauze. Taking Will's hand, he wrapped the bandage, gentle but firm. At this point Will's eyes had shifted from his hand to Hannibal's face. It was serious with intent, a slight moue of concentration on his jutting upper lip. His touch was careful. Potent.

"There," he said, fingertips lingering over his work for a few moments. His thumb stroked over the bandage, back and forth, a light soothing motion. He looked up. The light of the window was all in his eyes, turning his lashes to filaments of gold. 

“You ought to be more careful."

"I am. Usually."

"Something on your mind?"

Will raised expressive eyebrows.

"Heh. I can hazard a guess."

Quiet fell while Hannibal packed things back into the kit. Will turned his face to the side, sunlight warming his profile. Unconsciously, he withdrew his bandaged hand, holding it to his chest. 

“I keep having dreams about the man in the woods.”

“What sorts of dreams?”

“Bad ones.”

Hannibal gave him his full attention; closing the kit, he leaned closer, crossing his feet. “That’s natural. I can’t imagine it’s easy, taking a life.

“I dream that I’m shooting him over and over, but he doesn’t die. I can’t stop him. And the girl, she bleeds in my arms and I can’t do anything. Can’t save her.

“But you did save her.”

Will was silent.

Eventually: "What if she doesn't wake up?"

"Oh, I think she will."

* * *

She did, about a week later. 

Will saw her first, catching her movement from the corner of his eye. He paused in his speech and touched Hannibal’s hand, alerting him with a wordless tilt of his head. The two of them rose slowly so as not to appear threatening in any way. The girl had pushed herself up to sit against the headboard with strain; she observed the two of them with large, guarded eyes.

Will sensed from her a stab of fear, but she hid it very well outwardly.

“Hello,” he said. “I—" he stopped, a vise against his throat.

Hannibal stepped forward. “I am doctor Hannibal Lecter. This is Will Graham.”

“Hello,” she said. Her voice was hoarse with disuse. She must have felt a tug against her stitches when she spoke because her lips thinned, and a hand shot to her throat. 

"Are you in pain?" said Hannibal. 

"Some discomfort," she said, fingers tracing over the bandage.

“What is your name?” asked Will. 

A pause, as though she deliberated the caution of disclosure. "Abigail."

“Abigail. Do you remember me?”

She nodded.

In brief words, Will sketched the events of that evening. She had lost consciousness; he had carried her to his cottage; he had solicited Dr. Lecter’s help, whose home they were now in.

A frown creased her high forehead. “...How long?”

“You've been asleep for two weeks.”

A thought appeared to work behind her eyes. “I can’t repay you," she murmured.

“Don’t worry about that,” said Hannibal. He sat on the edge of the bed, took her hand in his. Will envied the ease of the motion, how unassumingly comforting. “You need only concern yourself with regaining your strength. We've been so worried about you."

His thumb brushed over the back of her wrist. "Such a terrible thing to have happened to you.”

She blinked.

“Do you have a home, Abigail?” said Will. “Someone we can contact to see you?”

For the first time since she awoke there was a crack in her composure. Her mouth wobbled. Her eyes went glassy. She looked so young, so lost. She shook her head.

And because the question was inevitable, a thick fog poisoning the air around them, Will finally asked—just above a whisper: “Who was that man in the woods?”

A curious blankness fell over Abigail’s expression. Her voice when she answered was wiped of any inflection.

“My father.”

* * *

Following the thunderous revelation, Abigail did not appear inclined to speak about herself any further. Will and Hannibal did not press; she had just survived an ordeal of an obviously complicated and sensitive nature. They were strangers. She needed space to process what happened, to come to trust them. Will couldn’t imagine that coming with ease, given the harm her own parent had inflicted upon her.

The day after she woke up, Hannibal removed the stitches from her neck. She sat very upright, her chin tilted to the side. He snipped at the thread, pulling it out with a pair of tweezers. She bit her lip against the discomfort, but made no sound. When it was done, she stood before the mirror, passing her fingertips against the slight pucker of the fresh scar, her eyes inscrutably hooded.

Over the next few days, Hannibal found ways to ask her questions to open up, skirting shy off uncomfortable topics. He was a steady presence that encouraged security. Will was mostly silent, vastly aware of his own relative ungainliness. He could scarce keep from fidgeting when the girl turned perceptive eyes in his direction, dreading whatever private assessment she made of him. It couldn’t be too flattering.

Hannibal claimed that Abigail was his ward, hitherto lodged at school. It pleased him to fuss over accommodating her into his home. While she’d been asleep, he’d gotten clothes which he estimated would fit her. Now that she was awake, he brought a tailor to take her proper measurements, adjusting the dresses to her size.

Abigail was sheepish to accept such generosity, but Hannibal coaxed her with reassurances. “Think nothing of it. It’s the least I can do to make you comfortable.”

“I already owe you my life,” she said. 

“Then a few dresses won’t make a difference.”

* * *

Abigail was in need of exercise and fresh air, so they took turns around Hannibal’s garden. Paved walkways wound across its expanse, cutting through the verdancy of trim grass. Flowerbeds were populated with spires of foxgloves and larkspurs, shrubs of peonies and roses.

Hannibal extended an arm, which she held onto for support. Will walked on her left side, lagging a step behind, resigned to letting Hannibal take the reins of conversation as usual—until a particular question snapped his attention.

“What happened to my father’s body?” 

Will exchanged a furtive glance with Hannibal. “I buried him in the woods.”

Abigail considered this. “I want to see the grave.”

“I’m…not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“It’s close to where…”

“Where he slit my throat?”

Will’s eyes widened.

“What?” she said, a hardness creeping to her voice. She stopped walking and removed her arm from Hannibal’s to face him directly. “There’s no use in hedging around what happened, is there? I might as well face it.”

A tense moment passed.

“Abigail may be right,” Hannibal conceded. Will shot him a disbelieving look. “It may do her some good to revisit the birthing ground of her nightmares. In the light of day her ghosts may be exorcised, giving her closure. Clarity.”

“And if she isn’t ready?” Will demanded, feeling vaguely betrayed. He had thought that he and Hannibal were in agreement. Hadn’t they had spoken about it? How they wanted to give her time? To protect her. 

“I want to go,” said Abigail, her jaw set in challenge.

“Then, we’ll take you,” said Hannibal.

Overruled, Will said nothing.

After the walk, Abigail went up to her room, escorted by Hannibal who prescribed her rest after a light meal. When he came downstairs, Will was wearing circles in the rug of the parlor. 

“I can tell you’re angry,” he said.

“I’m not angry. I’m just—” Will didn’t know how to finish. He sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“You’re protective of her, I understand. But Will, she isn’t made of glass.”

Hannibal drew closer, forcing him to make eye contact. “We’ll be there to support her should she need it. Don’t you think she deserves some closure?”

“Of course I do.”

Hannibal squeezed his shoulder. “It’ll be alright.”

* * *

At the appointed hour, Will put on his boots and stood outside his home, leaning against the fence. While he waited, he observed flecks and cracks in the paint and made a mental note to apply a new coat soon. Winston seemed in a mood to follow him, shuffling by his feet. Will pet his head absently.

When he saw the pair of them at the bend of the road, his heart leapt in his chest. He straightened up.

Hannibal dismounted his horse, then assisted Abigail down. Will noticed a silk scarf wrapped around her neck. Winston went up to her in a rush, sniffing at her knee. “Oh!" She exclaimed in a delighted voice, finding Will's eyes. "Is he yours?”

“Winston,” said Will, “He recognizes you.”

"Oh?"

“From that evening. He watched over you while you were in bed, didn’t you, boy?”

Abigail knelt down and allowed Winston to fawn over her, his pink tongue flicking at her cheeks. She lavished him with a generous petting, grinning all the while. She had never looked happier, a flush on her face, her eyes bright with mirth.

For Hannibal, Winston reserved a cool distance, which made Will bite his lip to keep from smiling. It was seldom that Winston didn’t take to people. Will found himself pettily gratified that Hannibal's perfect charms proved ineffectual here.

Not that he did anything to ingratiate himself.

The trip to the woods was uneventful. The weather was fine, if a little chilly. Will retraced the path he last took to bury the dead body (which seemed an age ago).

“Over here.” Will stopped. “By the poplar tree. Where the bark is nicked.”

A terrible hush. For some moments Abigail was motionless, merely staring at the spot. Then she came forward in inching steps. Will and Hannibal stayed back, if only to give her the semblance of privacy. Will turned away, but kept her in the periphery of his vision as she knelt by the grave.

She might have murmured something. Or perhaps that was a whisper of the wind against the leaves. Her mouth, as the rest of her face, was obscured by the spill of her hair, falling forward to screen her expression from view.

If she shed any tears, there were silent. Not a hitch of breath nor a tremor of the shoulder gave away her emotion. Yet Will felt it rolling off her, a tangle of ambivalence, roiling like a thunderstorm.

It came to him suddenly that Hannibal stood very close to him. Their arms were almost touching. Will imagined bumping them together, feeling a line of warmth through the press of their sleeves. Hannibal looked particularly approachable today. A tan frock coat. A cornflower waistcoat, embroidered with gold thread. His hair was tucked neatly behind each ear, its tips curling underneath his lobes. 

Will thought of a different touch, perhaps a hand on the back as they turned to leave? Or an arm around the shoulder, as men casually did. As he once knew how to do.

Would Hannibal welcome such a touch? He did not wish to be overly familiar. Perhaps Abigail was their charge, but that didn’t mean…it didn’t mean.

* * *

“So, when are you going to tell me about your new friend?”

Will spluttered.

Over the brim of her tea cup, Beverly’s eyes fixed on him as a pin against a specimen. It might have been half an hour since she dropped by to chat on innocuous topics. How very like her to ambush him with a false sense of security.

It didn't surprise him that that she knew about Hannibal. It was a small town, and she was the most avid of gossipers—it was really only a matter of time. He did wonder how much knew though. He had not broached the subject with her. Part of it was the fact that it wasn’t his secret to keep: he had Abigail's wellbeing to look after. That aside, if he were to be honest with himself, he wished for these two parts of his life to remain separate. 

He took a sip of tea to stall. “Uh,” he said, “there’s not much to tell.”

Beverly arched her brows.

He gave her a stilted, censored version of events. Collapsing at the marketplace, waking up at Hannibal’s guest room the next day. Their ensuing interaction, after Hannibal brought him stew the following week.

“So, we struck up…acquaintance. And I guess I see him…every now and then…” he trailed off lamely, watching for Beverly’s reaction. 

She did not tease or wheedle him for more details as he thought she might. She simply drained her tea, then set the cup on the saucer with a delicate clink. “You know,” she said, after an uncomfortable silence, “It’s fine to let yourself want things.”

Will’s heart stuttered. “What do you mean?”

“Whatever it is with you and Lecter…you can let yourself have it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She gave him a knowing look. “U-huh.”

Will was speechless.

"By the way, getting so sick you end up passing out in public is exactly the kind of dumbass move I've come to expect from you."

“It wasn’t that bad,” he groused. 

“You were out of it for a day!” 

“Less than a day. And I’m fine now.”

Beverly rolled her eyes. "You're terrible."

* * *

Will stood at the door to see her off. 

Because the universe conspired against him, he could just make out Hannibal’s untimely approach from the distance. He retreated into his home, hoping for Beverly not to question the direction of his path, that they pass each other without incident; but after a few moments he went to the window and found them exchanging cordial words, much to his chagrin. 

Katz was positively animated, looking pleased as anything.

Hannibal’s eyes rose and met his across the window. He flinched. _What was wrong with him? Why should he feel so terribly exposed?_

When Hannibal knocked, Will let him in stiffly, finding it hard to meet his eyes. Following his lead, Hannibal was rather cool in his greeting.

“I ran into a friend of yours outside.”

“I saw,” Will grimaced. “What did you talk about?”

“Pleasantries," said Hannibal with a flat smile. “Nothing of import.”

“Would you like some tea? I just had some with Beverly—but I could make some again. If you want.”

“Sure.”

He turned around, busied himself setting the kettle to boil.

“You are behaving rather oddly, Will,” observed Hannibal from his seat.

“Am I?”

A glacial silence.

Then: “Are you ashamed to be associated with me?”

Will wheeled around, shocked. “What?”

Hannibal did not repeat himself. 

“How—how could I be?”

Hannibal tilted his head, relentless in his scrutiny. “Of something, then." 

Will rubbed the back of his neck, turning back to the stove. A flush of color hit his face, hard. “Don’t make me say it," he mumbled.

“What was that?”

“I said. Don’t make me say it.”

In a few minutes, he brought a tray of piping tea over to the table. He was aware through every move of being watched by keen eyes. Pin against a specimen. Whatever it was Hannibal discerned seemed to satisfy him for the moment. He dropped the topic and accepted the tea with a significant improvement in pleasantness.

As usual, Will inquired after Abigail’s health. They found their footing after that, easing into familiar patterns of conversation.

* * *

_Will was laid out on his bed, an invalid. His arms were limp by his side. The windows were open; outside, the darkness was alive and yawning. The howling of his dog was a disconsolate sound in the distance. For whatever reason, he couldn’t let Winston in. He was trapped out there. Separate from him._

_Flickers of dying embers within the fireplace lit up the cottage lowly, casting an attenuated candescence._

_Hannibal leaned over him, dressed in dour black, his physician’s leather case in hand._

_"What ails you?" he asked._

_"I cannot tell,” Will answered miserably. _

_Hannibal came forward, his visage floating above Will, a swirl of shadow recessing the hollows of his face—appearing like a death’s head, with two very bright eyes. He laid his head on Will's chest, harkening to the beat of his heart. It was loud, and aching. The throb of it seemed to pulse along the walls of the cottage._

_"It is a sound heart,” Hannibal pronounced, at length, “Though it rings a solitary note.”_

_He pressed his lips to Will’s chest over it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (chanting) TOUCH STARVED WILL. TOUCH STARVED WILL. TOUCH STARVED—


End file.
